Not sure if this is an okay place to ask my scouting/draft questions, but I really didn't want to venture into scouting/draft threads where I thought they might be providing spoilers for how the specific players in generated drafts end up.

Anyway, I'm at Week 17 of the season, so I've done all the regular season scouting they'll allow me. I'd like to put together a rough "draft board," to figure who my targets should be round-by-round, and to help me choose who to throw more resources at by scouting them more closely.

But I'm so in-the-dark about how scouting/drafting goes, I'm afraid of making bad assumptions as I proceed.

So here's my questions...

1. At this point in the scouting process, is the "ovr?" rating to be trusted at all? I mean, do I need to be ignoring guys with awful "ovr?" ratings, and bumping guys higher on my list if they've got a high number? Or is this number worthless even as an general indicator?

2. If the "ovr?" rating is a reasonable barometer of how good guys are, then going by my scouting so far, a guy's projected round doesn't mean much because there are great players projected to go late and there are huge turdburgers projected to go in the 1st round. Correct? So, do the computer-controlled teams tend to stick roughly to the "projected round" designation, or do they skip that mess and just draft based on who their scouts say is best. I mean, if scouts say a projected 7th rounder is secretly an elite monster player, how does the CPU's draft logic work there? Would CPU teams who scouted him (and presumably know what I know about how good he really is) just try to pick him a round or two earlier than his projected round... or would they go crazy by throwing their 1st round pick at the guy just because their scouting says that's how good he is, Projected Round be damned?

1) I'd say only the OL would be a good indicator of how good the player will eventually be. HB's also are okay, but not enough information. That is why you should scout them further. Same goes with DB's and LB's. Overall, it's pretty useless besides the OL. You have no more information on other positions to know if they are good or not. But you do need that stage of scouting for HB, DB, and LB to get enough during the Combine Scouting. Besides the OL, yeah it's pretty worthless to count on the OVR in this stage.

2) As far as I can tell, the CPU drafts according the needs/projected round. I haven't seen anything yet to prove me wrong. If all Round 1 QB's are already drafted and the CPU's top priority is a QB, I believe they will grab a 2nd Rounder in the 1st Round. I haven't done enough research to back this up though. Those great OVR players you see that are not the OL may not be as great once you scout their key ratings later in the offseason so do more scouting and I think you'll see a better indicator of who you should draft. I do believe that the CPU picks on Projected Round over the OVR rating though.

I'm anxious to wrap up my first season so I can move on to the good stuff (building my own hand-picked team through the draft/recruiting is always my favorite way to savor sports games). Glad you set me straight on not placing importance on the early ovr numbers... because I was considering setting up my preliminary draft board by taking my 75 scouted kids and weeding out the ones with low overalls as a starting point. Which wouldn't be wise at this point in the scouting process, I know now.

This kind of info is really useful because Madden's scouting/drafting is so new to me. And I've been reluctant to even start up a "practice" franchise to play out the offseason to get a feel for it, because I don't want any spoilers on EA's hand-crafted draft classes. (Frankly, even with randomized names and numbers, I'm afraid I might still be able to recognize guys going by their heights/weights/colleges). So you've given me a lot to work with. Thanks again.

I am wondering if the cpu really scouts for the other 31 teams in the league...if i want to user draft for every team...will i see the ratings for some of the prospects when i am drafting with another team than my own?

I heard there is a scouting glitch to sort the 'Potential' rating as you scout during the season. I haven't tried it as I feel it might take away from the challenge, but if that might help some of you out there who find scouting too hard.

Thanks for posting this info. Seems like they should have tried to make scouting a little more balanced. There's pretty much no point in scouting anything other than o-linemen and running backs during the regular season.